Nate Silver has a fascinating post on this question. Here’s his answer: Individual members of Congress are responding fairly rationally to their incentives. Most members of the House now come from hyperpartisan districts where they face essentially no threat of losing their … Continue reading →

Zach Goldfarb has a story today that points out how rare broad-based tax increases are. I posted earlier about the history of individual income tax changes at the federal level – here is a similar chart that I made that includes payroll … Continue reading →

We’re often asked how much of a drag on growth is associated with each of the provisions of current law that usually are described as comprising the fiscal cliff. The table below presents such results for the four quarters of … Continue reading →

Dylan Matthews has a great post discussing more progressive cuts to social security than Chained CPI. He includes the option of altering the Preliminary Issuance Amount, which is determined by a benefit schedule that maps your “average wages” into a personalized … Continue reading →

Larry Summers argues it’s plausible that we can raise another $1 trillion+ over the next ten years – here’s how: The failure to tax capital gains at the point of death costs the federal government about $50bn a year. Since … Continue reading →

About

I'm an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Faculty Research Fellow at National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the Public economics group. You can follow me on twitter @omzidar.